Mom Hung Up on My Call for Help to Toast My Cousin, So I Vanished novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Custodial

The bank branch on Dearborn Street opened at nine.

I was there at 8:50, standing at the glass doors with my phone in my hand and my last four dollars in my pocket.

The manager was a quiet man in a gray vest.

He pulled up my account on his screen and read for a while.

"This was opened when you were fifteen," he said. "It's a joint account. Your mother is the other owner."

"It's my tutoring money. Every dollar of it. She never put in a cent."

"I believe you."

"Then how did she take it?"

"On a joint account, either owner can withdraw the full balance," he said. "It's the nature of the account. It isn't theft in the bank's eyes, and I can't reverse it."

"I'm eighteen. She should have been taken off in May."

"She should have," he agreed. "You would have had to ask us to do it. Did you?"

I hadn't.

I hadn't known I needed to.

I had never thought anyone in my house would take it.

"I can open a new account in your name alone," he said. "It will be empty. But it will be yours."

"Do it."

I signed six forms with my left hand because my right was shaking.

When I walked out, my balance was zero dollars and zero cents, and my name was the only one on it.

I stood on the sidewalk for a moment with the traffic going by.

Then I walked back to campus and went to the scholars' stone house.

The director was behind her desk, with her almonds.

I told her about the bank.

She listened without interrupting, and when I finished, she slid a form across the desk.

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